Unrestrained by Joey W. Hill Read Free Book Online Page B

she’d been thinking about this for a while, hadn’t she? She’d just lacked the motivating agent. A hot and sexy Dom who rescued her from a mugging.
    A wry thought, but it was more than that. Something about the way he handled himself, both as a Dom and a man, steadied her. He made her feel it was okay to say what she wanted to say. When she was ready to say it.
    “Yes, I do want to ask you for something. But I need to think about it.”
    “Fair enough.” He put down the coffee, settled back against the bench, crossing his arms over his chest, a relaxed pose that highlighted the easy power of his body. “So Jimmy says you were a pretty amazing Domme to your husband.”
    To your husband.
It was a specific way to put it. She stilled beneath the penetrating look. She’d fantasized about him having dark blue eyes, but the reality was far more exceptional. A casual glance, like her dazed perception last night, would suggest they were hazel, maybe green. In another light, a pale blue. But the truth was his eyes contained all those colors, blues and greens like the ocean itself, touched by sunlight with that gold ring around the pupil.
    “My buddies used to razz me by calling me ‘Merman,’” he said. “They’re distracting as hell, I know.”
    She smiled at the grumpiness. Only a straight man could get irritated about having beautiful eyes. Looking back down at her coffee, she traced the rim of the cup with her manicured nail.
    “Have you been looking for a new sub since your husband?” he asked. “Is that why you were at the club?”
    “Are you offering?” She tossed the smile his way, the tightness of it matching the feeling in her chest.
    He chuckled. “Not hardly. But when you were watching last night, your focus seemed different . . . for a Domme. Technique interests me. Maybe you just need to talk it through with a fellow Dom, someone you know you’re not intending to top. Removes the pressure. Like an actor going over his lines with a neighbor, rather than having to do it with his costar right off.”
    “Perhaps.” She needed to move the conversation away from this direction. She hadn’t denied she was looking for a new submissive, but in truth, such a thought hadn’t crossed her mind since Roy’s death. Not once in those two years, not once since she’d returned to the club, no matter how many unattached male subs had met her gaze briefly, extending the invitation. As Jimmy said, she’d been an amazing Domme. With Roy.
    Never again.
She’d had that thought last night, hadn’t she?
    He set aside the coffee. Before she could anticipate what he was doing, he removed his shirt in one fluid movement, set it aside. When he put his hand to the belt of his jeans, she wondered if he was going to strip it all off, but he was merely resting it there, shifting his weight to one hip. “Okay, no pressure. Take a look, evaluate me. Pretend I’m a sub. Let me feel it, the way you take control.”
    If her tongue was currently functioning, she’d say the same thing she would if he’d offered her a shot of Jack at nine in the morning. It was too early in the day for this. Of course, maybe the Jack would help her. She was in a different environment, with an unpredictable and overwhelming man. There was no way she could summon the focus, the control, for what he was suggesting.
    However, she routinely handled herself in demanding board meetings, at the podium of fund-raisers attended by well over a thousand people. She knew how to genuinely smile for hours, remember a hundred different names and the key details about the people attached to them. She could coordinate or defuse complex situations, put people at ease, draw them to her with warmth and direct them toward her goals. She knew how to connect to them in ways that brought out their better sides. She took personal pride in figuring that out for each individual, so that they felt so good about signing a contract with her company, or writing a check to